THE God Delusion - based on Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion - is the best documentary I've ever seen. And, I imagine, will ever see. No jokes. No smart-arse cracks. No witty asides.

Dawkins is a scientist and passionate atheist who has produced a stunning, thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is. Even in its mildest form. This provocative and entertaining ride will have some believers coming out the other end as atheists. And every Bible basher, Torah toter and Koran carrier calling the ABC to complain.

As I watched this masterpiece unfold, I couldn't remember the last time I had seen something so brilliant on the idiot box. Dawkins unapologetically refuses to treat religion differently to any other subject. There is no tiptoeing in fear of "offending" anyone (how you can offend people with truth is beyond me). Dawkins has harnessed his skill as a scientist, his hunger for truth and his rage to prove that God is a delusion that's infecting the world. He refers to "the process of non-thinking called faith" and bemoans "that the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe". He liberates the viewer with the conclusion that "atheism is life-affirming in a way religion can never be".

Atheists will watch this show and feel as if they have died and gone to heaven as they see a bloke far more smarterer than themselves poke that animal in the cage. The fundamentalists, the evangelicals, the dabblers and the moderates all cop it. Dawkins dismembers the lot with a scalpel. It's intoxicating for born-again atheists like myself. I have taken the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my Lord and personal saviour. That's right. I am a Pastafarian.

Atheism is, it seems, the new black. Dawkins' offering will not simply be preaching to the converted but actually convert fence-sitters with truth and reason.

Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it. Petty, vindictive, unforgiving and racist. An ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide."

Then Moses cops it. Dawkins quotes a Bible story and asks: "How is this story morally distinguishable from Hitler's rape of Poland or Saddam Hussein's massacre of the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs?"

Dawkins' masterful command of the language and his glorious Britishness is a delight throughout: "So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not bought up in the faith could reach to any verdict other than barking mad." He tells us that "killing for God is not just hideous murder but utterly ridiculous".

On Sunday night, if you listen carefully, you'll hear atheists all over Australia leaning back in their chairs, putting their feet on the coffee table and saying, "I'm with him." And I'll be one of them.

“Dawkins is a scientist and passionate atheist who has produced a stunning, thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is.”

Before the sun becomes a red giant and consumes the inner planets, the Andromeda Galaxy will be here and will have collided with the Milky Way. Those who remain on earth at that time, if they care, will not see the band of light of the Milky Way as we see it now. They will see a roundish cluster of stars, about twice as many stars as the Milky Way by itself, and they will see it four times farther from the center as we are now. See spaceflightnow.com

I haven’t seen the documentary or read Dawkins’ book. If I want to waste time, I can find other more enjoyable ways to do it. But I have heard him on interviews, and his basic take on religious believers is that they are stupid and deranged.

I saw the inteview and think Dawkins held himself pretty well. O’Reilly kept insisting that the only way to explain the tide going in and out was by reffering to a Creator and Dawkins told him that we know perfectly well why the tide goes back and forth.

thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God

I guess this is not exactly a claim to "prove a negative" but it seems fairly close. And is therefore little more than mental masturbation. There's no point to the exercise, but it makes Dawkins feel good.

2. Any belief system subscribed to by people who do bad things, in the name of it or not, must be false (bye bye U.s. Constitution).

3. Evolution is a fact, but man is the end-all, be-all of intellectual existence in the universe. Any rational entity deemed to be infinite (like those impersonal time and space thingees) is an affront to our self-esteem and must be false.

4. The fact that diverse cultures cannot agree on the nature and preferences of said entity is proof that one does not exist. In furtherance of this argument, it should be proposed that no student ever be marked down on any test question to which the teacher receives anything but a unanimous answer from his/her test subjects, as the lack of such a concensus clearly demonstrates that no single correct answer exists.

5. People who believe in such a being are simple-minded dupes in need of such a belief to sustain themselves. Examples of such simpletons include Dostoyevsky, C.S. Lewis, Solzhenitsyn, and multiple doctorate holder in physical sciences A.E. Wilder-Smith. Also included would be those mentally deficient folks who set out to disprove things such as Christ’s resurrection (Frank Morison) or Christianity in general (Josh McDowell), but strayed into belief somewhere in the midst of the evidences they were compiling.

thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God

This statement means nothing. It is an expression of belief, not a proof, or even statement, of fact. So Dawkins' work *denies* the existence of God. So what? There are also works that deny the existence of the Holocaust, or the moon landing, or Elvis' death. Each would claim to be "thoroughly researched and expertly executed", and each would be essentially nothing more than nonsense supporting a nonsense proposition which is itself based on nothing but assertion.

Atheists will watch this show and feel as if they have died and gone to heaven

Gone where?? Shouldn't this read "... feel as if they have died and gone to a place which doesn't exist and whose existence only deranged, stupid people could accept" ... ? And why would an atheist want to go to heaven, exactly?

as they see a bloke far more smarterer than themselves poke that animal in the cage.

The Khmer Rouge killed people for not beleving unreservedly in their system. I was reffering to theoretical paradigm in which belief in any given system is not enforced. This would exclude Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. The United States is as close in human history as we’ve been to such a system.

On Sunday night, if you listen carefully, you'll hear atheists all over Australia leaning back in their chairs, putting their feet on the coffee table and saying, "I'm with him." And I'll be one of them.

“The continuous disasters of man’s history are mainly due to his
excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation,
church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and
enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of
self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We
are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with
our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for
fanatical devotion.”
— Arthur Koestler

Exactly. I think it is very difficult to understand religious belief from the outside. I am an Orthodox Christian. A number of years ago I read an article in Christianity Today titled, "Why I am Not Orthodox" -- written by an evangelical who had lived in Russia for many years and had gone to Orthodox liturgies many times. His critique of Orthodoxy showed that he had no understanding of it whatsoever, and that's because he was looking at it from the outside, years of living in Russia and attending liturgies notwithstanding.

...that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is.

OK, but what does the second part have to do with the first part? Big Religions with their fear-based belief systems and horifying imagery - all projections of the collective human ego - really don't have anything to do with the existence of a Creator or the belief therein. There are many people who believe in God, find that faith life-affirming and real, and at the same time have no use for the current crop of rent-seekers and divisive hate-peddlers who operate in His name and quote moldy, mistranslated, and misunderstood tomes to justify their actions.

Not everyone loves God against human beings.

49
posted on 05/18/2007 9:39:08 AM PDT
by Mr. Jeeves
("Wise men don't need to debate; men who need to debate are not wise." -- Tao Te Ching)

Yes, Atheism- the bet of a lifetime- Yup- I’ll throw away the ONLY chance EVER of spending time with God and wager my soul’s eternal existence on the slight chance that there might not be a God- BRILLIANT!

Are these Atheist people complete idiots? Hey Atheists- When you can explain to me what I’ve lost by acceptign a FREE gift from God that will have eternal consequences for my soul, and when you can detail exactly how denying God is a more sure bet in the face of the uncertain prospect of eternity, then Yall come on back- till then- Keep your moronic reasoning to yourself.

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